RHINO POACHING CRISIS

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John Hume and RhinoDotCom would like to hereby thank Minister Edna Molewa and all at the DEA, as well as all relevant advisers and confidants who have considered and opted for a proposal to legalise trade in rhino horn. We know and appreciate the levels of work, commitment and courage that it has taken to reach this conclusion in the face of our relentless and volatile poaching crisis.
We support the decision wholeheartedly and feel that it is a pro-active step in addressing the root cause of the poaching problem.

We would also like to thank all those who are currently fighting the poaching on the ground and all those in national parks and on private land who are doing everything they can to keep our rhinos protected, breeding and happy. We applaud your bravery.

We offer our sincere condolences to all those who have lost rhinos to poachers - witnessing such a heartless and brutal act is something that will never be forgotten. Every poached rhino death has been a wasteful, unnecessary, tragic event.
We salute those who don't own rhinos but who care about these events and we know that a nation mourns alongside us, as our rhinos fall.

We will continue to offer our full support and co-operation to the DEA in their proposal build-up to CITES CoP17.

We hope that the various and numerous rhino groups in the country will follow suit and step up to join us in fighting for our rhinos and supporting the government's decision. Ultimately, we all have the conservation of our rhinos at heart and together, we can ensure that rhinos throughout the world are guaranteed a future.

A special thank you goes out to all our supporters and correspondents - your voices have kept us going through some very gloomy days.

Please click on the button below to view the FOX Crime Channel TV schedule for the August screenings of "Rhino Wars".
The documentary is produced by Phil Hattingh and team and covers three years of their investigative research in Vietnam, Laos, China and South Africa. It examines aspects of poaching, illegal trade and organised crime and it also suggests pragmatic methods of mitigating poaching.

Please also see the link below for a series of interviews by Matt Wilkinson of SafariTalk. His series kicks off with an interview of John Hume.

We highly recommend that you visit Matt's site as he offers some very interesting perspectives on various conservation practices:

Rhino's worldwide are now seriously threatened with extinction, because of being poached for their horns, which are
sold to mainly Asian consumers.

A lot of the information available to the public on this subject is either wrong or in some cases misleading which leads to poor decisions being made as to how to address this serious problem of rhino poaching.

Money and greed is what causes rhino poaching, so if we are to achieve any sort of success in stopping this slaughter of the worlds rhino's we have to understand these driving motives for rhino poaching. We need to examine whatever successes have been achieved in the past and having learnt them, we then need to apply them in our attempts to combat or contain this attack on these threatened animals.

Maybe some of these attempts at stopping rhino poaching might not be the answer, but what has been done up to now is not working, so it is futile to keep on applying things that do not work.

CRITICISMS OF A LEGAL TRADE IN RHINO HORN
The following are some of the primary criticisms against a proposed legal trade in rhino horn. We raise them here and provide our responses to each of them. Please click on the button below for more info.

After reading the innovative suggestions on methods to put an end to Rhino poaching, please add your voice by

posting your comments HERE

YOUR COMMENTS!

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My name is John Hume and my passion and mission in life is to save the rhino species from extinction, which I believe it is currently inexorably heading towards. I am the largest private rhino farmer in South Africa and my experience with rhino and deep concern for their plight are motives for my letter to you. I would like to rally the support of intelligent and sympathetic influentials who understand that South Africa’s “Big 5” will soon be the “Big 4” if we do not come to the aid of the rhino. Rhinos are vulnerable and totally dependent on wise men for their survival. We have to find innovative ways to...

The World Trade in Rhino Horn: A review was compiled in 1992 by Nigel Leader-Williams and has some very interesting information on the history of the rhino horn trade, as well as the various consumer countries.

RINO BLING

Please click on the button below to read this very interesting written account of some of Mr. Karl Amman's experiences with rhino horn consumers in China and Vietnam.

The film that he has produced with Phil Hatting is called The Hanoi Connection and you can follow it on YouTube here: http://youtu.beiSMsSrH5_io

SUMMARY OF RHINO POPULATION WORLDWIDE.

According to historians rhino's have been hunted initially mainly for food by ancient man up until today. Initially ancient man hunted rhino's for food and to a lesser extent the horn as well as other parts of the body which was used for ornamentation.

Today with more efficient killing methods the rhino is hunted for the horn used for traditional medicine - which is a fallacy because it has no medicinal properties - and in some cases for ornamentation.

From records dating back to the early nineteenth centuary, the world's rhino population was estimated to be about One Million plus in the early 1800's. Today there are between 25 000 to just under 30 000 rhino's left in the world.

The worlds rhino population has decreased by 90% since 1970 due to poaching.

There are 5 rhino species with two sub-species making 7 left in the world today.

1.) Black Rhino. (Diceros Bicornis)

The black rhinoceros or hook-lipped rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis), is native to Eastern, Central and Southern
Africa including Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Angola.

Although the rhino is referred to
as black, it is actuallymore of a greyish colour depending on the colour of the soil and the mud baths that they roll in.

For most of the 20th century the continental black rhino was the most numerous of all rhino species.

At the begining of the 1900's there were estimated to be over al hundred thousand living in Africa. However during the last half of the 20th century their numbers were reduced from an estimated 70,000 in the late 1960s to only 10,000 to 15,000 in 1981.

SUGGESTIONS TO CONTROL POACHING

There has been a ban on rhino horn trade for thirty five years and it has FAILED.

INNOVATIVE NEW SUGGESTIONS TO CONTROL POACHING

There has been a ban on rhino horn trade for thirty five years and it has FAILED. What do you think of ;

Overview:

Most of the rhino horns that have been poached go to Southeast Asian countries mainly China, Vietnam and Indonesia.

The main use of rhino horn is for traditional Chinese medicine although some rhino horns are carved into ceremonial cups and other ornamental carvings.

Despitescientific proof that rhino horn is made up of keratin which is the same as our fingernails, and is of absolutely no medicinal benefit, this belief that it cures a number of illnesses goes back 2000 years to Chinese records showing that rhino horn was being used as a medicine.

Rhino poaching started to climb steeply from 2010 with 333 rhinos being killed in South Africa (nearly one a day), which was nearly three times the number killed in 2009.

During 2011, 448 rhinos were poached in SA and at the current rate we are expecting to have over 600 rhino poached in 2012.